The God Who Never Changes

He alone is the one the Lord rightly calls good, and the whole world is a witness to his goodness — a world he would never have set in order if he were not good. For if “everything was very good,” then it follows, reasonably enough, that the things he set in order prove that the one who set them in order is good, and that things which are the work of a good arranger cannot be anything but good. So every evil is a departure from God. It is not possible for him to be the origin or the designer of any evil work — he who claims for himself the name of the Perfect One, and who is both Parent and Judge, and above all when he is the one who punishes and judges every evil work. Evil comes upon a man from no other cause than his own departure from the good God. And this very thing was marked out in man, not because it had to be, but because he himself willed it. That is how it became plain what evil was; and so that no one should think there was envy in God, it was made clear where evil had come from. [a]

God, then, is always like himself. He never turns or changes himself into any other form, since by changing he would look like something mortal; for the change involved in turning from one thing into another counts as part of a kind of death. So nothing is ever added to him — no part of him and no honor of his ever grows — since that would suggest something had once been missing from his perfection. And no loss is ever sustained in him either, since that would suggest he had undergone some measure of death. What he is, he always is; who he is, he is always himself; and whatever he is like, he is always like that. For growth argues a beginning, just as losses prove death and decay.

And that is why he says, “I am God, I do not change,” because what is not born cannot undergo change, but keeps its condition always. For whatever it is in him that makes him God must necessarily exist always, holding itself up by its own power, so that he is always God. And so he says, “I am who I am.” For what he is carries that name, because it always keeps the same quality of itself. Change destroys the force of that name, “I Am.” Whatever is changed at any point is shown to be mortal in the very thing that changed: it stops being what it was, and so begins to be what it was not. And therefore, reasonably, God’s standing always remains, since with no loss coming from change he is always like himself and equal to himself. And what is not born cannot be changed. Only things that are made, or that are begotten, undergo change; for things that at one time did not exist learn how to exist by coming into being, and so learn how to change by being born. But things that have neither a birth nor a maker have shut out of themselves any capacity for change, since they have no beginning, and a beginning is where the cause of change lies.

And so he is declared to be one, with no equal. For whatever can be God must, as God, necessarily be the highest; and whatever is the highest must be highest in such a way as to have no equal. So that with which nothing can be compared must be alone and one, without a peer, because there cannot be two infinites, as the very nature of things dictates. And what is infinite is what has neither any sort of beginning nor an end. For whatever has taken up the whole shuts out any beginning for another. If he does not contain everything that exists, whatever it is — and whatever is found inside a container is found to be less than the thing containing it — then he will stop being God, reduced to the power of another and shut inside a greatness larger than his own. And then what contained him would have the better claim to be God.

From this it follows that God’s own name cannot be spoken either, because he cannot be grasped by the mind. A name holds only what can somehow be taken in from the condition of a thing’s nature; a name is the sign of something that could be gathered from a name. But when the subject is such that the understanding itself cannot worthily gather it into one shape, how is it to be set out properly in the single word of a title? Since it is beyond the intellect, it must of necessity also be above anything a title can mean. So when for certain reasons and on certain occasions he applies to himself and puts forward his name of God, we know that what is being set out is not the strictly proper title, but a meaning fixed for it, so that people who take refuge in it may thereby seem able to obtain God’s mercy.

So he is both immortal and incorruptible, knowing no kind of loss and no ending. Because he cannot decay, he cannot die; and because he cannot die, he certainly cannot decay. Each is wrapped up in the other in turn, bound together with itself and in itself, and the two are drawn out link by link, each taking the other’s place, into the condition of eternity: deathlessness comes from being beyond decay, and being beyond decay comes from deathlessness.

Now, if we read of his anger, and consider certain descriptions of his indignation, and find hatred spoken of him, we are still not to understand these as said of him in the way they are human faults. All these things may corrupt a man, but they cannot corrupt the divine power at all. Feelings like these are rightly said to be in men, and are not rightly judged to be in God. A man may be corrupted by them, because he can be corrupted; God cannot be corrupted by them, because he cannot be corrupted. They do have a force they can exert, but only where there is already a material able to take an impression, not where there is a substance that cannot be impressed at all. [h]

God’s being angry comes from no fault in him. He is angry for our benefit, and he is merciful even when he threatens, because his threats call people back to living rightly. Fear is necessary for those who have no other motive for a good life, so that people who have abandoned reason may at least be moved by dread. So all these angers of God, or hatreds, or whatever else of this kind, are put on display as our medicine — as the case itself teaches — and have arisen out of wisdom, not out of any fault. They do not begin in weakness, and so they cannot work God’s corruption.

In us it is the different materials we are made of that usually stir up the discord of anger that corrupts us. But that cannot exist in God, whether as something of his nature or as a defect, since he is known to be put together out of no combination of bodily parts at all. He is simple, with no bodily mixture in him, wholly of that substance — whatever it is; he alone knows — which makes him what he is, since he is called Spirit. So the things that in men are faulty and corrupting, because they arise out of the body’s liability to decay and out of matter itself, cannot exert the force of decay in God, since, as we have said, they have come not from a fault but from reason.

Heavenly Scripture often turns the divine appearance into a human shape. It says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous”; or, “The Lord God smelled the smell of a pleasing scent”; or Moses is given tablets “written with the finger of God”; or the people of Israel are set free from the land of Egypt “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”; or it says, “The mouth of the Lord has spoken these things”; or the earth is presented as “God’s footstool”; or it says, “Bend down your ear and hear.” But we, who say that the law is spiritual, do not shut any shape or figure of the divine majesty inside these outlines of our bodily nature. We spread that character of unbounded greatness, if I may put it so, over its own open country without any limit. For it is written: “If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I go down into the world of the dead, you are there too; and if I take my wings and travel across the sea, your hand will take hold of me there, and your right hand will hold me.” [i]

For we understand the design of the divine Scripture in keeping with the way it was arranged. The prophet at that time was still speaking about God in figures, suited to that stage of the faith — not as God was, but as the people were able to take him in. So the fact that such things are said about God must be charged not to God but rather to the people. The people are allowed to put up a tabernacle, and yet God is not contained inside the walls of a tabernacle. A temple is built, and yet God is not confined at all within a temple’s limits. It is not God who is limited; it is the people’s perception that is limited. God is not cramped; it is the people’s grasp of reason that is cramped. And finally, in the Gospel, the Lord said,

“The hour will come when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem,” and he gave the reason, saying, “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”

So what is displayed there is God’s working, presented by means of bodily parts; it is not God’s appearance, nor the outlines of a body, that is being described. When eyes are spoken of, the point is that he sees everything. When an ear, that he hears everything. When a finger, some energy of his will is being opened up. When nostrils, his taking notice of prayers is shown, the way one notices a scent. When a hand, it is proved that he is the author of every creature. When an arm, it is announced that no nature can stand up against the strength of his arm. When feet, it is unfolded that he fills all things, and that there is nowhere God is not.

He needs no bodily parts and no duties of bodily parts, since all things serve his judgment alone, and stand ready for it, even when it is unspoken. Why would he need eyes, when he is himself the light? Why would he ask for feet, when he is everywhere? Why would he want to go anywhere, when there is nowhere he can go beyond himself? Why would he look for hands, when his will, even in silence, is the architect that lays the foundation of everything? He needs no ears, since he knows even the wishes that are never spoken; and why would he need a tongue, when his thought is a command? These parts were certainly necessary to men, but not to God, because a man’s plan would come to nothing if his body did not carry out his thought. They are not needed by God, whose works do not so much attend his will without effort as come into being at the same moment as the will itself.

He himself is all eye, because he wholly sees; and all ear, because he wholly hears; and all hand, because he wholly works; and all foot, because he is wholly everywhere. For whatever he is, he is the same throughout. He is all alike, and all everywhere. He has no variety in himself, being simple. The things that are broken down into a variety of parts are the things that come from birth and go to dissolution; but things that are not composite can know nothing of birth and dissolution. And whatever is immortal, whatever it may be, is one and simple and forever. And so, because it is one, it cannot be broken up; and whatever is set beyond the claim of dissolution is freed from the laws of death.

But when the Lord says that God is Spirit, I think Christ spoke of the Father in that way because he wanted something still more to be understood than simply that God is Spirit. For although in his Gospel he is reasoning in order to increase people’s understanding, he still speaks to them about God in the way they are so far able to hear and take in — even while, as we have said, he is working to add something religious to what his hearers know of God. For we find it written that God is called Love, and yet that does not declare God’s substance to be Love; and he is called Light, and God’s substance is not in that either. [o]

Everything said of God in this way is only as much as can be said. So it makes sense that when he is called Spirit, what is named is not all that he is. Rather, as a man’s mind advances by understanding as far as Spirit itself, being already changed in spirit, it may guess through the Spirit that God is something greater still. For that which is, taken as what it is, can neither be stated in human speech, nor taken in by human ears, nor gathered up by human senses. For if “no eye has seen, and no ear has heard, and no human heart, nor even a human mind, has taken in what God has prepared for those who love him,” then what and how great is he himself who promises these things — things in the understanding of which both man’s mind and man’s nature have failed!

Finally, if you take Spirit to be the substance of God, you will make God a creature; for every spirit is a created thing, and then God will be something made. In the same way, if you take God to be fire, following Moses, then by saying he is a creature you will have described the thing that was set in order, and you will not have taught who set it in order. But these things are used as figures rather than as being so in fact. In the Old Testament God is called Fire for this reason: that fear may be struck into the hearts of a sinful people by putting a Judge before them. In the New Testament he is announced as Spirit, so that, as the one who renews and creates those who are dead in their sins, he may be borne witness to by this goodness of mercy granted to those who believe.